Protecting Niagara’s ‘hidden gems’

Protecting Niagara’s ‘hidden gems’

Scott Rosts/staff photo

A suitable for sign is posted at Lakeside Park beach in Port Dalhousie earlier this spring. The Region hopes a new pilot project will result in beach postings that more accurately reflect if they’re safe to swim in or not.

When he penned a tribute song to Lakeside Park in the mid-1970s, Rush drummer Neil Peart spoke fondly of his memories of barkers, midway rides and willows in the breeze.

He left out the part about the sewage in the water that could leave you with eye and ear infections, vomiting and diarrhea.

The harsh reality is that the beach in Port Dalhousie, like dozens of other Niagara beaches on Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and the Niagara River, has for decades regularly been unsafe to swim in because of high levels of E. coli, a nasty bacterium that can find its way into waterways via sewage systems that overflow and manure runoff from farms.

A new report by Brock University’s Niagara Community Observatory released at Lakeside Park on Friday hinted the corner may have been turned on the health of those beaches, although study author co-author Doug Hagar cautioned that residents across Niagara need to play an active role in keeping our beaches safe.

People — including Americans — used to flock to beaches such as Lakeside Park and Fort Erie’s Crystal Beach by the thousands on weekends in the early and mid-parts of last century, hitching ferry ships to frolic in the water or on amusement park rides. But by the 1970s increasing pollution at the beaches saw many of those visitors stay away.

Many beaches were almost permanently posted as being unsafe for swimming because of high E. coli levels, and because of blooms of blue-green algae caused by fertilizer runoff, which can produce a variety of toxins that can lead to paralysis, acute liver failure, nausea or even cardiac or respiratory failure.

Ongoing efforts to get rid of contamination sources through such steps as separating municipal sanitary and storm sewers, and reducing household discharges through such things as banning weeping tiles and installing water meters to encourage conservation, may be helping to alleviate some of the pollution, said Hagar.

The new report, entitled ‘Niagara’s Beaches: Hidden Gems,’ shows the percentage of days that Niagara beaches were posted as unsafe rose fairly steadily from 2004 to 2010, going from a low of about 16 per cent to about 33 per cent in 2010. That steady increase might be due in part to warming temperatures making more ideal conditions for bacteria to survive in, and because of improvements in water quality monitoring catching bacteria that previously went undetected, he said.

But the percentage of days that beaches were closed fell in 2011 and dropped even further to a little more than 20 per cent in 2012, Hagar said. While some of that could be due to environmental causes such wave conditions and rainfall, he said he’s hopeful that humans are simply having less of an impact on water quality.

“We’re cautiously optimistic with the results,” he said.

Last December, the Community Observatory released another report on the health of the Niagara River. That report said 25 years of work on both sides of the border to clean up pollution sources has seen reductions of discharges from municipal and industrial sources into the river by 90 per cent or more.

But Hagar said ongoing work is needed to increase water quality at beaches, including addressing runoff from places such as farms that can carry fertilizers, metals and other pollutants directly into rivers and streams through storm sewers.

Residents also have to do their part, doing things such as diverting downspouts from driveways on to lawns to reduce flows into the sewer system, using less fertilizer on their lawns and using environmentally friendly soaps and detergents — particularly when washing their cars.

“People have to be cognizant of what they’re doing to contribute to the problem,” he said.

Niagara’s regional government, meanwhile, hopes a new three-year pilot project now underway will enable people to know for certain if the beach they’re heading to is really safe to swim at or not.

Until now, the Region — which regularly tests 26 beaches — has relied on sending water samples to a lab in Hamilton. The problem is that it takes 18 to 24 hours for results to come back, and by then conditions at the beaches have often changed: beaches posted as safe may in fact be unsafe, and vice-versa.

The Region’s public health department, in an Ontario first, has installed weather stations at Lakeside Park beach, Crystal Beach and Long Beach in Wainfleet, capable of measuring things such as wind direction and speed, humidity and rainfall. Buoys loaded with scientific equipment will also measure water conditions. In what’s known as predictive modelling, a mathematical formula will then be used to predict pollution levels, and that data will be uploaded in real time to the website the Region posts beach testing on.

Bjorn Christensen, director of environmental health with the Region’s public health department, said traditional lab testing of the three beaches will continue during the pilot, so the accuracy of the predictions can be tested. He’s hoping the new model will hit an accuracy level of about 85 per cent.

“The public can (then) make informed decisions about whether to go into the water or not,” he said.

Christensen said many other Ontario public health departments with waterfronts are closely following the Niagara pilot.

“They’re anxious to see the results,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.”

Ensuring beaches are clean and safe is important for a region blessed with so many miles of beach front, said Christensen.